My mother earned her teacher's credential sometime in the mid-1960s. Originally, she was a PE teacher, but by the time us kids (my sister and I) came along she moved into private Christian schools teaching all your basic classes. In 1981, it seems she took a different tack and started teaching Computer Science.
In 1980 we had a TRS-80 CoCo in the house, but with my mom's new direction various computers would begin to cycle through the house. An Apple IIe, almost the entire line of TRS computers, Timex-Sinclairs, VIC-20s, C64s, Macs etc.
Her lab at my school (because she taught at my school) was Commodore VIC-20s and one or two C-64s during the late 80s. She taught computer science and later yearbook (composed on a Mac using PageMaker) from 81' until she retired in 2012 or so.
I bring all that up, because as a a child of the 80's, I do recognize the stereotype you mention - I just never saw it or was personally around it. My mom had just as many females in her computer classes as she had males.
I agree that confidence is an ingredient. My wife is capable and in her own way has the confidence. It just wasn't anything she was interested in. But, the way I brought her in was showing her how all this stuff could make her life easier.
Anyone can learn this stuff, it's just having the want to learn it.
Wow that is so awesome to have your mom as such a role model! She sounds so cool.
My mom lost her education opportunities past grade school due to war, so she prizes education and I grew up valuing it, too, because of her. My mom is brilliant at teaching herself languages and pretty much everything else.
By the time I was in high school, my neighborhood was really in the throes of the crack epidemic with crimes and shootings. It was hard to envision myself in a world past that. It was like growing up in a post-apocalyptic world at times.
Imagine walking your dog and minding your own business and your neighbor across the street, who is always packing his illegal handgun, threatens you for looking in his direction because he thinks maybe you saw something that could get him arrested. Imagine getting fed up enough to sass him back but doing so in a way his pea brain wouldn’t recognize as sass.
Imagine going across the street to pull your other (good) neighbor’s pit bulls off fences they’d gotten hung up on by their collars, while drug thugs next door express disappointment the dogs are happy to see you instead of mauling you. Imagine glaring at them because nothing makes you rage more than bullies and animal cruelty and knowing it might be the last thing you do but you don’t care anymore.
I did manage to test into a special science and tech oriented public high school most definitely not in my neighborhood. That was cool.
But I did feel like a fish out of water. I clearly was having a different experience of life outside of school than my peers were. I felt I had to work twice as hard to keep up. Not having resources in the home was a particular challenge.
Still, it’s on me. Looking back, I now see I let plenty of opportunities slip by because I just didn’t recognize them as such. I had an appalling lack of vision and what little I had was supplied by movies and tv, hence my being more susceptible to stereotypes. That is still on me for not being more discerning. I can’t undo my idiocy, but I do what I can for the next generation.
